Jokers Wild Page 0,86

quickly to her warning. One of their captors gave them a suspicious glance as he walked past, and Roulette said pettishly for his benefit, "I don't need a commentary on taste from you. You're the one who picked this cat-vomit yellow"

The Chinese's mouth spread in a wide grin that displayed a good deal of pink gum and a gold-capped tooth, and he passed into the kitchen alcove.

Tachyon cast her a rueful glance. "Cat vomit? I'd always thought it to he a particularly lovely shade of lemon." Roulette laughed, and the alien gave her an approving look. "Good girl, well get out of this yet."

"What a team," she replied dryly.

Chapter Twelve

5:00 p.m.

The dark current swept around his legs and the alligator welcomed it. The pulsing water had started to rise only a short time before; first just a film creeping across the rocky floor of the tunnel, then a succession of gradually higher waves. Now the water lapped around his belly, a quartet of small eddies tugging at his legs where the haunches creased into his armored sides.

The alligator's tail swung back and forth ponderously, impatiently. He wanted the water to float him away from the, hard floor and to give him the buoyancy he needed for true swimming. The water meant freedom.

But the level rose no further, and so the alligator plodded on. Various objects, chunks of a varietv of substances, nudged against him. He nuzzled some of them with his snout before they were swept away in the current.

The scents were largely unpleasant. There was nothing there worth the devouring. Lumps of something soft batted against him and were gone.

He briefly detected meat, but it was carrion and he had no taste for that now. Instead of snapping up the ragged object, the alligator forged on. Something alive and delectable still lay ahead of him. He knew that, and, knowing it, forced his nearly insatiable hunger into abeyance.

Under his feet, through his ears and nostrils, through the very wave action of the current, he could feel the pulse of the city. Now it beat in time with his own body.

He ignored the slight pain in his belly. It was as nothing compared to his appetite.

Ahead and behind, the dark tunnel stretched on forever.

He had been trying to reach Tachyon for two hours now, and Hiram was growing concerned.

Everyone agreed that the little alien had left Jetboy's Tomb soon after completing his speech, in the company of an attractive black woman. But where had they gone? His home phone did not answer, and down at the Jokertown clinic, Troll insisted he hadn't seen the doctor all day. Tachyon was probably out somewhere drinking, but where? Hiram had called all of his usual haunts one after the other, had even tried Freakers and the Chaos Club and the Twisted Dragon on the off chance that the Takisian might have decided to drown his guilt on unfamiliar turf: No one had seen Tachyon since the early afternoon, when he left the ceremonies at the Tomb.

Fortunato might not have cared, but Hiram was growing concerned. Had the Astronomer already gotten to Tachyon? Was there another name to add to the list of the dead?

There was a tightness in the pit of his stomach that no amount of food would cure. Restless, uneasy, unhappy, Hiram Worchester got to his feet and strode out into his restaurant.

The doors would be opening in less than two hours. Nearly every ace who counted would be arriving, and he devoutly hoped that Dr. Tachyon would be among them. By then, the worst would be over. Even the Astronomer was not insane enough to attack the kind of power that would be assembled at Aces High in two more hours.

Hiram strode to the long, curving bar. The wood gleamed, and the mirror was spotless and brilliant with reflected light. A quartet of bartenders in sky-blue shirts were tapping into fresh kegs of Guinness Stout, New Amsterdam, and Amstel Light. Modular Man was way down on the last stool, drinking a rusty nail. The android liked to experiment.

" I detect no sign of any hostile presence," Mod Man said. Hiram nodded absently. "Keep watching," he said. He headed for the kitchen with long light strides, still thinking about Tachyon. He must be at home, nothing else made sense. But if he were home, why not answer his phone? Because he was dead, whispered some dark part of Hiram's brain, and he could almost see the small alien lying on